perspective {guest post}

This is a post from my daughter's blog.
She and her family live in Cambodia.
We are so proud of her and the mission in her heart.
I hope it touches you as it did us . . . .

survival mode {perspective}

[perspective: the view from our porch as a thunderstorm rolls in ]

because it seemed that the days had been coming in frantic rushes.  there were details to remember, a farewell party to coordinate, daniel's show going late, late, late cutting into precious sleep, arranging babysitters, a saturday board meeting to chair.  round & round she goes.

& i sat in the tuk tuk & exhaled deeply. mind racing, i thought:

"we've been living in survival mode ever since cedar was born.  when will it end?"

& then i remembered.

i remembered the woman with the recycling cart & her newborn slung in a scarf between the bars that she pushed, walking the streets asking for others' trash., unable to rest - where was her maternity leave?

i remembered the boys huddled at the bus stop sniffing the glue bottle.  so young & beautiful & already longing to be numb.

i remembered our own ming kohm & how she had to leave her tiny daughters to go work in the rice fields.  how she heard their cries when a neighbor lied & told them that she was never returning.  how she showed me how she would bind her breasts so she could go the whole day without feeding her baby.

i looked down & remembered that the coffee i was drinking as i whizzed through the city costs the daily wage of the construction workers i watch from my kitchen window.

 oh, right. 

i have never, not ever, known what it is like to live in survival mode.

sometimes perspective is like a swift slap to the face. 

 [but the good kind, like the kind that snaps you out of navel gazing & jolts you into gratitude]

we live in all we seek